Category Archives: Space

Space History: The Moon, Then and Now

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Forty years ago today — November 14, 1969 — astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr., Alan L. Bean, and Richard F. Gordon, Jr., blasted off atop Saturn V rocket SA-507 on Apollo-12, the second lunar landing mission. President Richard Nixon attended, and became the first U.S. President to attend a launch.


(Apollo-12 launch. NASA image.)

On the ascent, the Saturn V was hit by lightning while it passed through a low cloud. This was the first such event in the program; the electrical discharge passed through the Saturn vehicle to the ground. After NASA confirmed the lightning had done no damage, the crew proceeded to the Moon.


(Apollo-12 mission logo. NASA image.)

While Gordon orbited in the Command Module “Yankee Clipper,” Conrad and Bean descended to the lunar surface on the 19th of November in the Lunar Module “Intrepid.” They landed on Oceanus Procellarum, the “Ocean of Storms,” and began their excursions. The mission included several milestones:

  • First time the surface crew went out on two EVA periods.
  • Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) deployed for the first time.
  • First time a geologist planned lunar surface activities in real time.
  • First-ever return of spacecraft parts from the lunar surface: from the Surveyor-3 lander.
  • First multi-spectral imagery of lunar terrain from lunar orbit.

That was then, and this is now: If you didn’t catch the news from NASA yesterday, the recent LCROSS mission confirmed the presence of water in the shadowed crater Cabeus at the Moon’s south pole. This is great news for future lunar exploration — and for those of us who have written stories about lunar exploration!

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Space Truckin', For Real

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Twenty-five years ago today — November 8, 1984 — Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51A. Astronauts Frederick H. (Rick) Hauck, David M. Walker, Joseph P. Allen, Anna L. Fisher, and Dale A. Gardner deployed two satellites, Telesat-H (Anik) and Syncom-IV-I (also known as LEASAT-1), and retrieved two disabled communications satellites, Palapa-B2 and Westar-VI.


(Astronauts Gardner and Allen on the Remote Manipulator System after capturing Westar VI. Note the “For Sale” sign. NASA image.)

It was the first time two satellites were captured for return to earth, and demonstrated a capability that only the space shuttle had (and still has, for as long as we continue to operate shuttles*). Their week-long mission ended on the 16th when Discovery landed back at KSC.

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*Makes me wonder if a space-retrieval capability could be a money-maker for some savvy space entrepreneurs….

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In Space History: a Pioneer Approaches Jupiter, and Atlantis Launches

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Thirty-five years ago today — November 3, 1974 — while on approach to its December flyby of Jupiter, the Pioneer-11 spacecraft sent back the first polar images of Jupiter, according to this NASA site.


(First image of Jupiter’s polar region, by Pioneer-11. NASA image from the National Air & Space Museum.)

We’ll have more about the Pioneer-11 flyby in December, when it made its closest approach to Jupiter.

And 15 years ago today — November 3, 1994 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-66.


(STS-66 mission patch. NASA image.)

U.S. astronauts Donald R. McMonagle, Curtis L. Brown, Jr., Ellen Ochoa, Scott E. Parazynski, and Joseph R. Tanner, along with French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy, conducted a variety of experiments on the third flight of the Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Sciences (ATLAS) payload. The mission landed at Edwards Air Force Base on November 14.

Of note: since shuttle pilot Curtis Brown hails from North Carolina, his STS-66 mission is also featured on the North Carolina Aerospace Initiative web site, specifically on this November history page. (Full disclosure: I’m the Associate Director of the NCAI, and built the web pages in question.)

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Space History Sadness: First Astronaut Fatality

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On October 31, 1964 — 45 years ago today — NASA astronaut Theodore Freeman died when his T-38 crashed at Ellington Air Force Base, Texas. He had been selected in October 1963 as one of the third group of NASA astronauts, and was the first astronaut or astronaut-trainee to lose his life.


(Theodore Freeman. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Freeman’s official astronaut biography is here. You can also read about him at the Astronauts Memorial Foundation.

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Lunar Landing Research, 45 Years Ago

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Forty-five years ago today — October 30, 1964 — NASA pilot Joseph Walker took off from the South Base area of Edwards Air Force Base on the first flight in a Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV).


(LLRV in flight. NASA image ECN-506, from the NASA Dryden photo collection.)

Walker flew the vehicle three times that day; his total flight time was just under 60 seconds, and he reached a peak altitude of about ten feet. That may not sound too impressive, but think about how difficult the thing must have been to fly:

Built of aluminum alloy trusses and shaped like a giant four-legged bedstead, …. the LLRV had a General Electric CF-700-2V turbofan engine mounted vertically in a gimbal, with 4,200 pounds of thrust. The engine got the vehicle up to the test altitude and was then throttled back to support five-sixths of the vehicle’s weight, simulating the reduced gravity of the moon. Two hydrogen peroxide lift rockets with thrust that could be varied from 100 to 500 pounds handled the LLRV’s rate of descent and horizontal movement. Sixteen smaller hydrogen peroxide rockets, mounted in pairs, gave the pilot control in pitch, yaw and roll.

And remember, all of this was done with primitive computers by today’s standards. Today, we might build it so that a control computer would measure the vehicle’s movements and its shifting center of gravity, and compensate automatically; they didn’t have that luxury, which to me makes their accomplishment even more impressive.

Eventually the three LLRVs were sent to Houston, and joined by two Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTVs), which lunar module pilots used to train for the descent to the moon. Without them, the Apollo lunar landings would have been much more difficult — maybe impossible.

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Galileo in Space, Twenty Years Ago

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Twenty years ago today — October 18, 1989 — Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-34. Astronauts Donald E. Williams, Michael J. McCulley, Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, Shannon W. Lucid and Ellen S. Baker launched the Galileo spacecraft shortly after arriving in orbit.

(STS-34 mission patch. Click to enlarge.)

Nearly six years later, on July 13, 1995, Galileo rendezvous with the planet Jupiter and released its descent probe into the Jovian atmosphere.

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Soviet Firsts in October Space History

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Forty-five years ago today — October 12, 1964 — the Soviet Union placed the first three-man crew in space when cosmonauts Vladimir M. Komarov, Konstantin P. Feoktistov, and Boris B. Yegorov launched aboard Voshkod-1. In addition, Feoktistov was the first civilian in space.

And forty years ago yesterday — October 11, 1969 — the Soviets started a three-day launch series that resulted in the first time that three different spacecraft, with seven cosmonauts total, were in orbit simultaneously. Soyuz-6 was launched on the 11th, carrying cosmonauts Georgi S. Shonin and Valeri N. Kubasov. Soyuz-7 launched 40 years ago today, carrying Anatoliy V. Filipchenko, Vladislav N. Volkov and Viktor V. Gorbatko. And then on the 13th, Vladimir A. Shatalov and Aleksei S.Yeliseyev launched on Soyuz-8. All of these missions launched from Baikonur, in what is now Kazakhstan.

Two thoughts:

1. Considering that the latest crew to depart the International Space Station landed in Kazakhstan over the weekend, and that Soyuz rockets and capsules will soon be the only man-rated system to ferry people to and from the ISS, it’s safe to say that the “workaday” approach of the Soviet space program has proved very robust indeed.

2. Do you think they planned these missions for October in honor of the Bolshevik Revolution?

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Budgeting Radiation on Space Shuttle CHALLENGER

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Twenty-five years ago today — October 5, 1984 — space shuttle mission STS-41G launched from the Kennedy Space Center.

(STS-41G mission patch. NASA image. Click to enlarge.)

Space Shuttle Challenger carried U.S. astronauts Robert L. Crippen, Jon A. McBride, Kathryn D. Sullivan, Sally K. Ride, David C. Leestma, and Paul D. Scully-Power, and Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau. This was the first space flight to include two women, and Kathryn Sullivan became the first female U.S. astronaut to perform a spacewalk. Garneau was the first Canadian payload specialist to fly in space, and Scully-Power was the first oceanographer in space.

The crew deployed the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite early in the flight; the ERBS was part of a larger Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) comparing the energy absorbed by the earth with what the planet emits into space.


(ERBE longwave radiation data. NASA image.)

The crew spent the rest of their eight days in orbit performing various experiments. In one, they demonstrated the possibility of refueling satellites in orbit.

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First Images of the Far Side

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Fifty years ago today — October 4, 1959 — the first probe to return pictures of the far side (not the “dark side”) of the moon was launched. The Luna-3 flyby mission launched on a Vostok rocket from what is now the Baikonur Cosmodrome.


(Luna-3’s first image of the far side of the moon. From the National Space Science Data Center.)

On the same day, the U.S. launched “Little Joe 6,” from Wallops Island, Virginia, to test the Mercury space capsule’s integrity and aerodynamics. The capsule reached 37 miles altitude and flew 79 miles downrange, and the mission was listed as “partially successful.”

The space race was on, a half century ago. Thinking about it makes me wonder if we have the national will to start running a space race again, with the Chinese and the Indians in the mix.

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In the Old Days, Everyone Was a Rocket Scientist

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Our first space history item is interesting, but not the main event: On October 1, 1949 — 60 years ago today — the Long Range Proving Ground was activated at Cape Canaveral, Florida. It became the Florida Missile Test Range, and eventually Patrick Air Force Base and the Kennedy Space Center.

But the event that elicited this post’s subject line happened 40 years ago today, in 1969, when the European satellite “ESRO-1B” was launched from Vandenberg AFB by a Scout rocket. The NASA press release for the launch is very interesting: it includes pages of background information that must have fed the interest and imagination of every would-be “steely-eyed missile man” in the general public.

I had to grab the press release from the Google cache because the NASA link was broken, and I’ll only copy a few paragraphs here:

September 28, 1969
RELEASE NO: 69-138
FOURTH ESRO SATELLITE TO BE LAUNCHED

A 176-pound satellite carrying eight experiments to study the polar ionosphere, the Northern Lights and related phenomena, is scheduled to be launched by a four-stage Scout rocket from the Western Test Range, Calif., no earlier than Oct. 1, 1969. Called ESRO-1B, the European designed and built satellite is the fourth in a cooperative program between the European Space Research Organization (ESRO) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The program is carried out under terms of an agreement signed by the two organizations in December 1966, relating to providing ESRO with launching and associated services.

ESRO-1B is a duplicate or backup version of ESRO 1-Aurorae, a cooperative ESRO/NASA project, which was successfully launched into a highly elliptical near polar orbit by NASA on October 3, 1968, and is still operating. The same complement of eight experiments–a series of high-latitude particle detectors, auroral photometers, and Langrnuir probes–is being carried on board ESRO-1B. The experiments were provided by the Technical University of Denmark; Kiruna Geophysical Observatory, Sweden; the Radio and Space Research Station, Slough, England; the University of Oslo, Norway; the University of Bergen, Norway; the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment; and the University College, London, England.

The orbit planned for ESRO-1B is near-polar, inclined 86 degrees to the Equator, with an apogee of 435 kilometers (about 270 statute miles) and a perigee of 400 kilometers (about 248 statute miles). Orbit period will be 92 minutes. Scientific measurements made by the ESRO-1B will be concentrated over Northern Europe to enable correlation between ground-based polar ionosphere observations and measurements made simultaneously with sounding rockets launched from the ESRO launch site at Kiruna, Sweden.

Once injected into orbit, the ESRO-1B will be despun by means of a yo-yo system to about 1 RPM. Final stabilization will occur about 10 days after launch when the spacecraft locks onto the Earth’s magnetic field. This stabilization is achieved by means of a pair of magnets inside the satellite. To minimize oscillations, slender magnetic rods are also mounted inside the satellite.

And so on. On page 10 of the news release:

ESRO-IB FACT SHEET

Launch Window: 30-minute window which changes only slightly from day to day. The window opens at 3:29 p.m., (PDT), October 1, 1969.
Launch Site: Western Test Range, Lompoc, California, Pad SLC-5.
Launch Vehicle: Four-stage solid fuel Scout rocket.

Orbit:
Apogee: 435 km (about 270 statute miles)
Perigee: 400 km (about 248 statute miles)
Period: 92 minutes
Inclination: 86 degrees
Stabilization: Spacecraft is spin stabilized at about 148 rpm initially. Despun to one rpm by yo-yo mechanism and further despun by magnetic system which interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. Stabilization thereafter will be provided by a passive system consisting of two permanent magnets.

I find the inclusion of all the detail fascinating. But maybe that’s understandable, since I still am a would-be rocket scientist.

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